Tuesday Night at the Huff and Puff 3,28,2017

We implemented the 55' car rule and removed all the longer rolling stock. Now we have some yard space. Even with a few turnouts acting up in Wellington trains are running normal. Hopefully we can complete all the construction next Tuesday as it is our work night. We can also start to get ready for the open house in May.

Passenger train arriving in Elsewhere 

Ore train on the Great Lakes Steel siding. 

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Tuesday night at the Huff and Puff

The first trial of Wellington went well. Some over ballasted areas were cleaned up, a piece of ballast was removed from the spring area of a malfunction Peco turnout and most of the track was cleaned. A gremlin caused erratic behavior of some engines which remains unexplained. The yards in Wellington seem to be working well and making up trains from the sorted yard is a breeze.

Don working in the yard.

A ship lies rigged and waiting in the harbor.

Friday fun 3,17,2017

I should call it Feeder Wires Friday. All of the feeders are done, even the sanding rack switch. The remote turnouts have not been tested, some solder needs to be filed off the railroad heads, 1 Peco turnout spring is not working identified by a push pin, it may have to be taken out to repair or replace it. The clean up was also started. A lot of work and patience has gone into the Wellington rework, a big thank you to everyone!  I think it was worth it and hope the new yards work as anticipated. The sorted rolling stock yard looks good only time will tell if it works out.

Tuesday night at the Huff and Puff 3, 14, 2017

The uninsulated frog.

Well the storm took its toll on our attendance but it gave us time to test out Wellington.  A test that failed! Dead short. Check all the feeders, all good. Check all the wires to the turnouts, all good. Remove any leftover old feeders, still a short. Put all the points of the turnouts open, still a short.  There must be an uninsulated turnout some where. Aha, a Peco Electrofrog  turnout, where did that come from? That only took 2 hours. Gapped the 2 inside rails to the frog and tested, no short. With a sigh of relief we retired to the lounge to congratulate ourselves.

Jumpers under a Peco Electrofrog. 

Repurposing

One of the fun aspects of model railroading is to repurpose one thing into another. Now that we are almost ready to reopen Wellington Yard after its refit over the past few weeks, it's operation needs to be overseen. Usage procedures are changed so it's important to have a base of operations for the yard dispatcher. Pictured at the right is a non-descript British Triang OO guage plastic snap together building of about 60's or 70's vintage. North American yard offices were usually two story so the dispatcher could see the yard [not needed now with computerization]. The roof has been pried off and addition added.





In this shot, the roof has been popped back on the second story styrene addition and a stove pipe added as the original chimney went missing over the years. Windows will be added to allow the dispatcher to view all the yard tracks at any point before issuing orders for trains entering the yard, switching cars into appropriate sidings, making up trains, etc. Switches could be controlled from this location as well.

And here is the repurposed result ready to go to work overseeing the activities of Wellington Yard. It has brickwork on the upper story which is appropriate to the layout's era and a box window on the end so that the dispatcher can see who is going into the loo underneath [not really].
This was a fun little project that adds a real life dimension to our layout.

Elsewhere changes

As discussed at the meeting sometime in the future we will make some changes to the Elsewhere yard.  We all know that because of the length of the tracks, the rolling stock at the end of the yard never gets used. So the idea is to cut the yard in half and move the turntable under the one in Wellington, as shown in the illustration below. Interestingly the old arrangement had 3 storage tracks 10 feet long and the new arrangement has 9 storage tracks 5 feet long so we gain 15 feet of storage.

 




































Above  I have shown different ideas for the approach area. The program track will be in the office. We can use the turntable as 1 track of the run around, or add a run around, we could loose 1 yard track to be used a run around, that's up for discussion.  With 9 storage tracks we can put 1 type of rolling stock on each track as in Wellington. Ideas welcome. It would be nice to keep part of the present run around to stage and outbound train.

Fork truck needed.

I'll be first, if anyone has a spare fork truck, we could use 1 for the pier at Northdale. Crates, barrels and dock workers would complete the scene.

Tuesday meeting night 3, 7, 2017

Lots of topics were discussed. We decided to get a package of Dust Monkeys track cleaners and will do a post on them when we get them. Members will now be able to post railroad related items for sale or what they are looking for on the blog, this is a trial, and the seller is responsible for the items., not the club. We also agreed we will limit freight cars to 50 feet long, so all the ones over this length will be replaced eventually. Not only will this save space but also get us back to our 50 to 60 era.  The idea of having an everything goes night also came up. We will have to talk about this later. Progress at Wellington is going well so looking forward to normal operations we reviewed running the branch freight with the cards at Wellington and holding an old time passenger train in the Ortona yard. When this happens I will post the sequence on the blog. Sequential switching will also be tried then.

Scenery at Wellington 

Looks like problems up the pole.

Friday fun 3,3,2017.

Strip, tin, solder, strip, tin, well you get the point, lots of feeders put in. The second half of the turnouts are also wired up. Scenery has been added around the freight yard and Cullen Mill. It is amazing how a couple of foreground buildings can make the background look better. Great Lakes Steel building flats, were moved over a bit for a better looking arrangement. The branch line cards were moved to a rack at Wellington, as we are going to try running the branch mixed from there. It should be mentioned how patient everyone has been during the changes to Wellington which should soon should be completed. It sure looks like a better arrangement.

Great Lakes Steel behind the  bridge. 

Lots of  wiring 

Scenery!

Sequential deliveries.

Here is an idea to ponder. A long time ago Mike talked to me about the fact that with our card system we never pickup and deliver anything. At the time I didn't think it would be possible, but let's take a look. Say your train is leaving Wellington, 1 card is to deliver a box car to Hayes Co. which will delivered there and all cars will be picked up there as usual. The next card of our 2 card allotment is for 3 tank cars to Shell Oil in Springbank. And 3 tank cars are in your train, but next the dispatcher also includes a card for 3 tank cars to Coastal Oil in Herons Landing, but these cars are not in your train. The process will go like this. You have left Wellington with 3 empty tank cars for Shell Oil in Springbank. You drop off the empty cars and pickup any loaded cars there, filling out the requirements of the first card. When you arrive in Herons Landing you drop off the loaded tank cars and pickup the empty cars there, filling out the requirements of the second card. These cars are then delivered to Elsewhere. The operator now has a sense of completing an actual task. This double move fits flawlessly into our card system, the guy who designed it is brilliant, lol. This double move could be used for other paired industries as long as their siding capacity is the same.

Tuesday Night at the Huff and Puff 2,28,2017

Glen added a couple of buildings and a road behind Cullen Mill as Wellington starts to get scenery, Don hinted a large stone building may be coming as we all had a hand in building it. More feeders were added. Rolling stock was placed at the industries in Wellington to get a sense of the capacity of the sidings. Restricted trains were run over much of the railroad. Next week is meeting and work night.

Glen hard at work

Lincoln is always busy

Map tape added to fascia

Great Lakes Steel background